1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to methods and systems for searching. For example, embodiments of the present invention relate generally to methods and systems for using social networks to personalize search queries and results and improve a user's search experience with a search engine.
2. Background
A conventional search engine, such as the Google™ search engine, returns a result set in response to an input query submitted by a user. The search engine performs the search based on a conventional search method. For example, one known method, described in an article entitled “The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Search Engine,” by Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page, assigns a degree of importance to a document, such as a web page, based on the link structure of the web page. The search engine ranks or sorts the individual articles or documents in the result set based on a variety of measures. For example, the search engine may rank the results based on a popularity score. The search engine generally places the most popular results near the beginning of the result set.
Unfortunately, because conventional search engines cannot take into account a particular user's personality, preferences, interests, etc., such search engines will often provide irrelevant results. For example, a search for the query term “apple” may provide results pertaining to Apple brand computers, the fruit apple, or a particular musical group called apple, while a particular user may only be interested in one of these topics for the term “apple.” Thus, it would be useful to provide methods and systems that take into account information indicative of a particular entity's preferences, interests, etc., when an electronic search is performed for/on behalf of such entity.